Usage Guide for Windows Version

Installation and launch

Installation:

Step1: Unzip the archive.


Step2:
Run vcredist_x86e.exe (Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 redistributable, English Version);

Step3:
--For Windows XP: Run TibetFontInstall.exe -->Reboot --> RunPerfectSetup.exe.
-- For Windows Vista/ 7: Run PerfectSetup.exe.

Launch:

Open Microsoft Word or another program.

-- Choose “Clear formatting
-- Choose Himalaya or other Unicode Tibetan fonts.
-- Choose “Perfect Tibetan” from language bar

Perfect has two modes of operation: Tibetan mode and Sanskrit mode. By default Perfect starts in Tibetan mode for Tibetan typing, so upon starting the program one is able immediately to type Tibetan. To toggle between two modes press icon  or ,or press the “q“ key.
You can switch among different input layouts(for example,Chinese input layout) by pressing Ctrl+Shift or Ctrl+Space.

Input interface

After Perfect is lunched, you can see its Logo on the language bar, and status bar and input window at the bottom of the Desktop. The input window is divided into 3 areas: the input code area, the Tibetan result area and the phrase candidate area.

Input keymap

The keymap basically adopts the Wylie transliteration scheme except thatuses the lower case letter v anduses the capital letter V, so གཱ becomes gV.

1) The 30 Tibetan consonants and 4 vowels:

2) Retroflex letters, long vowels and Tibetan numerals:

3) Commonly used punctuations, symbols, marks and signs:

How to type Tibetan

1) Standard Tibetan input

To input standard Tibetan, switch to the Tibetan mode , and type the transliterated letters following the above Wylie scheme.

The rule is: transliterate Tibetan characters in a syllable from left to right and in stacks from top to bottom with the vowel being transliterated after the final consonant of the root letter or stack and use space between the syllables.

Press Enter key will release the resultant string to the client application program.
Examples: བསྒྲིབས becomes bsgribs.

བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས becomes bkra shis bde legs.

gya is stacked, but g.ya isn't.
Example: གྱེང becomes gyeng but གཡེང becomes g.yeng .

More examples
བཞུགས་སོ།། bzhugs so//

སྐྱེ skye སྒོའི sgovi བཀྲ་ཤིས་ཤོག bkra shis shog

ཁུངས་རྒྱན་རྙེད་དྭགས་སྤྱོད་འོག་རྩིབས khungs rgyan rnyed dwags spyod vog rtsibs

2) Tibetan phrase input

Perfect provide a Tibetan phrase input method to simplify phrases input with an input-dictionary of 180 thousand Tibetan phrases.

Just input the first letter of the root consonant and vowel of each syllables of a phrase with no space between the syllables, and the vowels are optional.

So, there are several ways for encoding a phrase:

a) Use pure root consonants. This is the simplest way for typing long phrases.

Example: བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས bkra shis bde legsksdl

b) Adding vowels to some root consonants to narrow the matched results.

Example: བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལེགས bkra shis bde legskasideleor ksidle or kasidl

c) For a long phrase (e.g. more than 5 syllables), it is not necessary to type each of the root consonants of all syllables from beginning to end. Use the asterisk “* ” as a wildcard character at the end of the input string for neglecting the rest syllables.

Example:
སྐྱེས་བོ་ཆེན་པོའི་མཚན་སུམ་བཅུ་རྩ་གཉི

skyes bochen povi mtshan sum bcu rtsa gnyi kbcp* or kbocp* or kebocp*

As you are typing, for example, “bkra shis bde legs yskg”, Perfect will use the last syllable string “yskg” for phrases searching in the input-dictionary, and the matched results will be listed in the phrase candidate area. Candidate phrases are initially sorted in Tibetan alphabet order, and automatically sorted according to the actual use frequency.

Use the number key to select among the candidate phrases; Use the “-”key and “+”key,or “PageUp” key and “PageDown” key to turn forward and backward between pages of phrases, if necessary.

3) Non standard Tibetan stacks and Sanskrit

Switch to the Sanskrit mode . In this mode, stacks are typed using plus-sign '+' to stack glyphs vertically. Press the Space or Enter key will release the resultant string to the client application.

Examples:
དྷཱི d+hVi ཛམྦྷ dzm+b+h སིདྡྷི sid+d+hi

རྦྷྱོ r+b+h+yo ཀུམྦྷཎྜེ kum+b+hN+de

ཨརཀྵིཏཱརཾརཱཛཱནཾགྷྣནྟིདོཥཱཿ ark+ShitVrMrVdzVnMg+h+nn+tidoShVH

User-defined phrases

If you press the semicolon '; ' key, all the string in the input code area will be treated as user defined phrases and be saved to a user-defined-dictionary file userdict.txt located in the “My Documents” folder.

The phrases in the user-defined-dictionary will have priority in being listed at the front of the candidate phrases. Candidate phrases are automatically sorted according to the actual use frequency.

Skins

At present, four skins are provided: ‘Silver’, ‘Dragon’, ‘Conch’ and ‘Lotus’, Click to the skin menu to select your preferred skin. The default skin is ‘Silver’.

Soft keyboard

Soft keyboard is mainly used to input varies kind of Tibetan symbols, signs and complex non standard stacks.
Click to pop up the soft keyboard. Click “Options” on the soft keyboard to select among six different soft keyboard layouts: Numeral keyboard; Consonant keyboard; Suffix keyboard; Symbol keyboard (I); Symbol keyboard (II) and Vowel keyboard.

Tibetan numeral keyboard

Tibetan consonant keyboard

Tibetan suffix of keyboard

Tibetan symbol keyboard (1)

Tibetan symbols keyboard (2)

Tibetan vowel keyboard

How to get help

Press Button, select "Help" to open the help file help.pdf.